Let's Go, Jane!

My first week in Asia has been a welcome shift–new continent, new culture, new rhythm. I started out in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia which, like Türkiye, is a majority Muslim country. Malaysia is a real blend of Malay, Indian, and Chinese cultures that is most evident (to me) in the food. It’s also hot and humid, with temperatures in the mid-80s and heavy rain showers most afternoons.

On my first full day, I walked out of the hostel and down the street, looking for a place to eat. Normally I use Google Maps to preselect a restaurant, sometimes even going so far as to preselect my meal. But on this day I decided to wing it. I found a restaurant that looked popular with the locals, and stepped inside.

A woman in a hijab brought me a menu with pictures. I pointed to one that looked like a combo platter. The food arrived without utensils, and the woman said something about washing my hands. I looked around and was startled to see that everyone was eating with their hands. “Okay,” I thought, “I’m game.” I washed my hands and sat down to eat. There was rice, noodles and chicken. And tempeh, and what I determined to be jackfruit, along with a few other side dishes I couldn’t identify.

I dug in, and after a few bites the woman brought me utensils. “I must be doing something wrong,” I thought. I looked around the restaurant and realized that everyone was eating with their right hand. I am left handed, so of course I dug in with my left. I pulled up my trusty friend Chad (ChatGPT) to confirm my hunch. My exact prompt was, “I feel like I’m on a different planet. Even ordering in a restaurant. No utensils? Is it bad to eat with my left hand?” Chad confirmed that the left hand is considered unclean, and assured me I was right to feel that I was on another planet. I ate the rest of my food, which was delicious, without incident until I encountered a chili that nearly melted my face off. No regrets.

I am slowly learning to embrace that feeling, of being perpetually clueless. Of course I come with my own cultural biases, but I do my best to approach each situation with a beginner’s mind, a Zen Buddhist concept about approaching subjects with openness, eagerness, and a lack of preconceptions, as if encountering them for the first time. In my opinion, that is absolutely the key to long-term travel.

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.”

— Lao Tzu

Of course, a beginner’s mind doesn’t mean it’s always easy. It can be exhausting, all this traveling. I am my own travel agent, so there are some days when I spend an entire morning or evening booking buses, trains, or flights and researching accommodations. I’ve slowed down the pace of travel to where I am spending an entire week in each location. When I arrive in one place, I choose the next destination and make the arrangements for how I’m going to get there and where I will sleep. I’ll book a walking tour for the first full day, and sometimes an activity like a cooking class if it seems that it might be fully booked up by the time I arrive. But that’s all I do in advance.

Then I turn to the place where I’ve just arrived and start compiling ideas for what to do while I’m there. I have found that staying in one place for a whole week means I don’t feel the same pressure to make every meal count. I always want to try all the local specialties. When I have a full week to do that, I can decide to have a burger for lunch one day, or make a large bag of Doritos my dinner. It also means fewer logistics to plan out in advance. I can spontaneously take a day trip to a national park or set out and walk 20,000 steps before coming back for an afternoon nap.

Because I can’t read the street signs and don’t know the social norms, I base my actions on what I see other people doing. I walked up many, many stairs to reach the temple at Batu Caves. There were groups of men sitting on the floor in the uppermost cave, and I waited until I saw a woman sit on the ground before taking a seat myself. I sat for an hour and meditated and people-watched, listening to the birdsong and watching the monkeys descend the cave walls. It was incredibly peaceful.

Kuala Lumpur is among the least pedestrian-friendly cities I’ve been to. I walked 45 minutes to the botanical garden one day, and found that there were whole sections of road where there were no crosswalks at all. As a side note, there was an orchid exhibit at the botanical garden. I’ve been to many orchid exhibits before, but this was the first one that was actually outside. Usually they’re inside in perfectly controlled conditions. Conditions designed to match the place I am in now.

I perpetually find myself on the wrong side of the road. In fact, on my first night, jetlagged after 30 hours of travel from Croatia, I found myself needing to cross to the far side of a road that had three lanes of traffic in each direction. The traffic came to a stop on my side, and I weaved my way through the three lanes of stopped cars to make it to the traffic island in the middle of the road. Then the backup cleared and I found myself stranded on an island with three lanes of cars zipping by on both sides of me. Having only gotten a few hours of interrupted sleep on the overnight flight, I did not trust my reflexes enough to make a break for it, so I just stood there laughing at the absurdity of the situation. HEADLINE: Tourist gets stranded on traffic island for several hours. Eventually the traffic slowed enough for me to take a chance and jog across to the other side so I could continue on to my hostel.

My first week in Malaysia has taught me to expect the unexpected. It is the first country I have visited that not only drives on the left hand side of the road, but also people stand to the left on escalators. One day I found myself in the “ladies coach” of the commuter train, with a sign that said no men or couples allowed. And lest I had any hopes of blending in here, while waiting at the meeting spot for a walking tour a man asked if he could place his small children on either side of me and take a photo. I may never blend in, and maybe that’s the point. Each country reminds me that being a little lost is exactly where I learn the most.